Friday 6th January 2023: We are already the first week into the new year, a time for new beginnings, hopes, dreams and plans. I will briefly recap what happened since I last blogged.
The day after returning from Lapland I came down with a bug, nothing surprising there really but it went on for days and days, nausea, cold, shivering, extreme tiredness, not really what you want in the run up to Christmas as I could barely function. Couple that with the minus temperatures all week long and the difficulties of getting water to the animals every day and life was a tad difficult for a while. I had Christmas table decorations to get made for orders but I could hardly function normally let alone creatively. I had also agreed to make something for the church pulpit from dried flowers.
Thursday 15th December: The temp on the van was registering -10 at 7.30am this morning so what it went down to overnight is anyones guess. This year has definitely been extremes in temperature, I think that might be the coldest we have had here. Hopefully today it is going to get above 0 which will be a massive help because trying to get water to all the animals is bloody difficult I can tell you.
At one point I did think I would have to cancel the Christmas orders or at least put them off but by the designated date I was able to get them all made and off to customers so that was good. It made me realise that I probably would strike weddings off my possibility list because if the Lupus flared I would not be able to fulfil the order and I wouldnāt want that.
I just about felt well enough by the 20th to go out and get the last of the Christmas shopping bits and I never normally leave it that late. By the 23rd I was feeling normal and looking forward the the festivities, we had Christmas carols that evening round the pond which has a Christmas tree in the middle which was a lovely start to Christmas. A lovely relaxed Christmas Eve, Charlie, Macca and Oscar for Christmas Day and then everyone for Boxing Day breakfast and round to Shelleyās for supper in the evening. I was feeling very content, happy and lucky, we went round to my sisters the day after Boxing Day and by now I had developed a tiny irritating cough but nothing too much. Well the cough got worse, much worse, to the point where I was having to hold my side during coughing fits as I was afraid it would herniate, I couldnāt sit down or lie down without spasmodic coughing fits that became continuous. Along with this came sinusitis, a fuzzy head, loss of hearing and I went though a whole pack of toilet rolls just getting rid of the mucus. I felt pretty sorry for myself and was mostly confined to the sofa for what seemed like an eternity. Itās a good job we didnāt have NYE plans and we were supposed to go to Charlie for New Yearās Day dinner but she was ill and so we didnāt go until the following day. All in all Christmas has been about illness and not just for me as I know lots of people who have had similar experiences and are struggling to shrug the bugs off.
I am still not well, better but not well and as luck would have it I had a telephone appointment with the rheumatology dept on the 4th. That was actually pretty constructive and thorough, the upshot is that because I am on the immune suppressants my body canāt fight off the bugs successfully. I have also had an ongoing UTI which at this point I have had three lots of antibiotics for but I canāt shift it. No wonder I feel so poorly, there will be a meeting to discuss how to treat me, it will be a tightrope walk š Basically in order for my body to fight these infections I will probably need to come off the immune suppressants in order for the antibiotics to work but that in turn could then trigger a Lupus flare, I am stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea. Obviously I need my body to repair and I donāt think it is going to do that while I am on the medication, the gamble will be how long to I stop it for before it becomes too long š¤·āāļø
What else happened over Christmas, well we had a weird thing happen when I couldnāt find Dieselās bowl one morning. He gets fed by the back door and has a stainless steel bowl, this particular morning it was gone and despite searching for it I could not find it. So I found another bowl and used that for his morning and the night feed, the next morning that bowl was gone as well š¤Ŗ I imagine it was a fox that carried them off but where too that is the question. We did find one right at he back in one of the paddocks but never found the other yet. One of those nights I woke up at 1.30 with a coughing fit and could hear something up on the roof, I went into the boot room and the dogs and cats were fast asleep so it wasnāt any of them, also not human otherwise the dogs would have been barking. It was definitely heavier than squirrels or birds so again I am thinking the fox was up there maybe eating the last of the apples that were on the roof still. I told John in the morning and he said ādidnāt you go out and have a lookā no I bloody didnāt lol, I have watched too many horror films to be that stupid š
John has been busy, while I was incapacitated, taking down the partitions in the stable area in order to rebuild it into a work shop for the flowers. He also had to do everything else bless him as I literally could not do anything. Normally I would have spent the time planning the year ahead and working out what I want to get done, what needs planting/sowing and this year what workshops I want to offer but I have not been able to do any of that at all. I have bulbs that arrived that are just sat outside, I have not checked on any of the seeds or bulbs I had already sown for at least a month now but none of that can be helped and I am sure I will catch up at some point. The weather apart from that very cold snap has been mild, mild means plenty of rain, plenty of rain means the front paddock has a lake in it, standard stuff for winter.
That in a nutshell is how the last month has gone for me, illness, Christmas, more illness and not a lot else getting done at all. But as always I am not one to be defeated and so I will keep doing what I can in bite size pieces until I get to where I need to be š I want to be offering various flower workshops this year coming, I want to increase the amount of flowers I sell and I want to make sure I have flowers available on a regular basis so that customers know when they can come and get them. I am looking forward to this next year and seeing what it brings plus I will be getting back on track with the home grown veg which went a little by the by last year, those are my plans at least, we will see how they go.
Today I am going to be clearing and tidying the office/craft room which has become clogged with all manner of things. Dried flowers, craft stuff, Christmas stuff, it all needs sorting and putting away so that I can see what is what in there again. I was going to go out with the girls today but I have decided that I need to limit the possibility of picking up any more bugs. Firstly I donāt think my body can handle much more and secondly I would worry about my chances if I had to end up in hospital with the state of things at the minute š I donāt think the outlook would be good to be honest. The state of the NHS has been a hotly talked about topic as you can imagine, my take on it is that undoubtedly there has been a lack of funding but I also think there is far more to it than that. Purely from a laypersons point of view the system is broken in so many areas it would be difficult to know where to start. It needs looking at from a fresh point of view instead of trying to patch up the holes, easier said than done but maybe that is what happens with anything, a system reaches capacity, collapses and a new system is born.
We have had the first goose egg of the year, that is ridiculously early but as it is so mild not unexpected to be honest.
We are well into the New Year and so as I publish this today I have some exciting plans to look forward to and implement, I already have enquiries coming in which is both fabulous and daunting at the same time š but āgo big or go homeā Charlie has told me so here I am jumping in both feet first š¤Ŗ
frieslandfarm (flowers) 